Parting Gifts — Charlotte Vale Allen

When Kyra Latimer loses her husband to a freak accident in Manhattan, she can't absorb the fact of his absence and can't imagine how she'll be able to move into the future without him. But on the day of his funeral, the unimaginable happens.

A young woman, with a small boy in tow, shows up at Kyra's home, claiming to be the child Kyra surrendered for adoption some 20-odd years before. Refusing to accept the truth -- that she cannot possibly be Kyra's child --

Jennifer Cullen insists on leaving her three-year-old son, Jesse, with his "grandmother." If Kyra won't take the boy, Jennifer is going to turn him over to Children's Aid.

Touched by the boy's visible neglect, and as deaf to reason in her own way as Jennifer is in hers, Kyra agrees to keep Jesse. After hastily drawn-up legal documents are signed by both parties, Jennifer goes hurrying off, and Kyra takes on a new role -- as mother.

As it turns out, Jesse is no ordinary child, and Kyra is no ordinary mother. In the course of their life together in London, surrounded by the illustrious and eccentric members of Kyra's renowned British theatrical family, Kyra and Jesse flourish and founder in unanticipated ways.

Until, finally, Kyra is forced to confront an impossible choice: whether or not to honor the life-or-death decision of her adopted son.